The Brady Bunch Movie (1995)

February 17, 1995

FILM REVIEW: THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE;
If Dumb Is a Hoot, Here's a Scream

By JANET MASLIN

Published: February 17, 1995

WHEN the lights go down, the film begins and "The Brady Bunch" song plays over the opening credits, expect the inevitable: your skin will crawl. As well it should, since queasiness is the right response to a feature-length version of a never-great 1970's television show. Dorky even in their prime, the Bradys have never had the cachet to warrant a sincere revival on this scale. Only now, as self-conscious cluelessness enjoys its golden age at the movies, do they lend themselves to post-modern kitsch.

At least "Brady Bunch" cultism remains a marginal phenomenon. (The film's director, the Emmy Award-winning Betty Thomas, and several of its cast members have acknowledged that they hardly knew the television show when they signed on for "The Brady Bunch Movie.") So this film doesn't set its sights solely on homage, despite its way of lining up the Brady children in order of height and sending them cavorting through Sears during a moment of musical glee. At best -- that Sears outing is as good as it gets -- the movie manages to be painless and pointless in equal measure.

In its bolder moments, "The Brady Bunch Movie" also stresses contrasts between squeaky-clean Bradyisms and 90's grunge, thus prompting an uneasy mix of condescension and nostalgia. Bell-bottom pants and orange polyester will do that, especially when they're being gaped at in disbelief by the film's more modern characters. Before pitying the Bradys, however, remember that they're emissaries from a time when pop culture wasn't as willfully stupid as this.

Directed in the style of Penelope Spheeris ("Wayne's World," "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Little Rascals"), who has begun to look like the Eisenstein of the Idiot's Delight genre, "The Brady Bunch Movie" winks hard at its material and at viewers. The film rightly assumes that the mere sight of scary clothes and super-groovy 1970's artifacts within the Brady household (where the lawn is made of Astroturf) will be enough to trigger Pavlovian laughter, not to mention shame.

Throw in the proper esthetic references and there's really occasion to squirm: wide ties, raging polka dots, fringed jumpsuits a la Elvis. A Brady patriarch who reads "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" in bed. Hey, hey, they're the Monkees! And three of them are in this movie, too.

So is the transvestite RuPaul, since the running joke is that the Bradys live in their own suburban bubble, oblivious to the passage of time. Brushes with the 1990's leave them at a loss, as when Marcia Brady (Christine Taylor), a teen-age coquette with a mostly pink wardrobe, discusses her boy troubles with a girlfriend, who has her own lesbian crush on Marcia. As a Brady, Marcia doesn't even register such concepts on her radar screen. "Doug, your hand is on my shoulder," she sternly informs a boy she dates. "That's third base, and I don't go for that."

All right, "The Brady Bunch Movie" deserves its chuckles at such moments. And this film could have justified its feature-length existence by delivering more of the same. As we adjust to each new "how low can you go?" phase of Hollywood's mental limbo-dancing, we might as well succumb to deliberate satire in this vein. Still, a present-day view of the clinically wholesome Brady clan has its troubling side. If the film makes the Bradys' naivete ridiculous, its 90's teen-age students -- who require a weapons check at a school dance -- aren't necessarily living in a better world.

The cast, featuring potentially pulse-quickening cameos by real "Brady Bunch" television stars (Ann B. Davis, Florence Henderson, Barry Williams), is led by Shelley Long (as Carol) and Gary Cole (Mike), who are nicely in tune with the vacuousness of their material.Until she's ready for the 3-D IMAX full-length version of "Cheers," Ms. Long will remain well-equipped for fluff like this. She brings all due saccharine to the dialogue ("Oh, Mike, what?" "Oh, Mike, why?" and "Oh, Mike, how?") that neatly sums up her world view. Four writers are credited with this screenplay, by the way.

Mr. Cole, in particular, meets the challenge of winking through a wax museum role. While delivering a wide-eyed impression of Robert Reed, who originally played Mike, he also has fun with Mike's paternal preachiness. "I never thought of it that way," muses a Brady son, solemnly appreciating one of Mike's little lectures. The screenplay also supplies Mike and Carol with bedroom double-entendres that wouldn't make a Boy Scout blush, and with certain wild indulgences, like having squandered some of their savings on a trip to the Grand Canyon.

The Brady children are as handily caricatured as their elders (Christopher Daniel Barnes does well as Greg, the most Osmond-like singer in the clan). In sitcom spirit, Henriette Mantel and Michael McKean round out the cast as the family's eye-rolling maid and scheming next-door neighbor. The actors try hard, but the screenplay isn't solid enough to keep any of them consistently clever.

Mr. McKean, whose "Spinal Tap" and "Laverne and Shirley" connections made him a patron saint of the New Stupidity when it was still smart, is quoted in the film's production notes as comparing the Brady Bunch to Tiffany lamps. "They're the classics of their period," he explains. Shall we take that thought seriously and start worrying? Or can we just assume that today's Tiffany lamps may be the flashlights of tomorrow.